


Second Order Effect

by SaltCore



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst, Hurt Hanzo Shimada, Justice Siblings, M/M, Shovel Talk, and other bad coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 10:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15435561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltCore/pseuds/SaltCore
Summary: Hanzo hadn't considered a close call of his own would ripple out to hurt the people who care about him.Fareeha breaks it down for him.





	Second Order Effect

Consciousness comes unwillingly, dragging its feet through the mire inside Hanzo’s skull. He dumbly watches the dull red of the backs of his eyelids, only cognizant of how hard it is to _think_. There are sounds, somewhere, but they are unfamiliar and repetitive, and he can’t make himself focus enough to parse them out.

Eventually it occurs to him that he doesn’t know where he is. The last thing he remembers is being unable to breathe, unable to see. He should be able to remember more, and that knowledge sparks a chain reaction of anxiety and fear, because he can’t think and his body feels heavy and something must be wrong.

It should not be so hard to open his eyes, but the light is overwhelming, like a physical pressure trying to force them closed again. But he needs to know where he is, to know what has happened, so he blinks and squints and eventually he adjusts.

He doesn’t know the ceiling, so he lets his head tip to the side and then he can see medical equipment he does recognize. This is one of the recovery rooms in the Watchpoint. There is something at the bottom of his peripheral vision, and he glances down. It’s strapped over his face, and he stares at it for a long few seconds before recognizing it as an oxygen mask. He twists his head the other way, and that’s more of an ordeal that it has any right to be.

Fareeha is staring at him over steepled hands.

He stares back at her, trying to puzzle this new mystery out. Of all people, why is it her that’s here? She isn’t the _last_ person he would expect to see, but his relationship with Jesse’s sister is, tactfully put, politely distant. She does a half step better than tolerate him but just that much and no more. Or, at least, that’s how it seems to Hanzo. All things being equal, he would prefer to be seeing Jesse himself.

 _Jesse_. He can’t remember precisely when he last saw Jesse. Hanzo himself must have been deployed to be lying here now, but there is a hole in his memory that yawns wide, and he can’t remember if Jesse was with him in the field. If Fareeha is here and Jesse is not—

Hanzo can feel his heart start to hammer in his chest, can hear something beep in time; he struggles for breath despite the mask. Had something happened to Jesse?

“Where is Jesse?” Hanzo asks. He sounds pitiful to his own ears, his voice a thin rasp.

Fareeha’s gaze doesn’t waver and she doesn't answer. There’s something cold in her eyes, something tight in her posture. She crosses most of her fingers, leaving only the pointers extended and presses against her lips. Fear tightens Hanzo’s chest.

“Where is Jesse?” he tries again, louder this time. His lungs spasm in his chest with the effort, and the coughing hurts much more than it should.

“Puking his guts up,” she says finally. Her tone is ice.

 _That_ scares him into action. He starts to push himself upright, but his arms won’t cooperate, he can’t find purchase on the sheets. Fareeha holds one hand up, which arrests his attempt to move. He stares at her hand, then at her. Without her face obscured, he sees that she is _furious_.

“You don’t move, you don’t talk until I’m done,” she says. That’s an order, in the military sense. Hanzo has seen that tone, that cadence snap others into immediate obedience when wielded by Fareeha’s mother. He feels himself bending in compliance, even now.

Fareeha lets both her hands fall between her knees. She cracks her knuckles carefully, finger by finger, right then left. Each pop is harsh in the quiet. The small muscles around her jaw jump, as if there are words fighting to get past her teeth.

“You don’t get to do this to him,” she starts with no small amount of menace. “Not you, not anybody. You don’t get to hurt him like this.”

His stomach drops. What had he done? Surely, _surely_ he hadn’t hurt Jesse. He searches her face, but there’s no quarter there, and bile rises in his throat. What happened that he can’t remember?

“He loves you, you dumb bastard!” she snarls. “He loves you, so when you get the order to retreat, _you damn well do it_. Especially when the fucking building is on fire.”

 _Fire_. There was a fire, there was smoke, he couldn’t breathe and he was bleeding and the download was taking longer than they’d thought. They were screaming in his ear to come back, but the data was here and if he left then all that effort would have been for nothing. He had pulled his jacket over his nose while his eyes watered and the blood kept coming, and he waited until the download was finished before he ran. But Jesse, Jesse hadn’t been with him, he’d been screaming in his ear, safe and sound and far away. Hanzo sighs with relief.

Fareeha, however, isn’t finished.

“He sat here for two goddamn days, drinking coffee and sneaking stims, not sleeping, not eating. Mom forced him out of this chair,” She reaches down and shakes the armrests. “before he really hurt himself. We thought he was finally getting some sleep, but instead he was getting it in his head that you weren’t going to wake up.” She lifts one hand and rubs her face. “Your prognosis didn’t change, he was just so fucked up he couldn’t think straight anymore. He drank fuck knows how much before Athena woke us up.”

She sighs heavily. Looking more closely, Hanzo can see her eyes are bloodshot, her hair is loose and tangled. She’s exhausted, in addition to being furious.  

“I have never seen him like that,” she murmurs, finally looking away. “Screaming about people dying on him. He threatened to put his fist through my suit because he was sure it would be the death of me. Yelled over Mom for a while, and, god, she just let him. Maybe she was right to let him just wear himself out, I don’t know. I didn’t realize he was still so angry about—”

Fareeha’s hand traces a sloppy arc in the air by her shoulder, like she could draw a line around Captain Amari’s ‘death’ and in doing so confine it and the subsequent fallout to the past. Hanzo knew that the hurt still simmered, tempered by time and knowledge of the truth, naturally, but there all the same. It’s one of many hurts Jesse carries, each buried deep. Most of the time, anyway.

After a few moments in tense silence, Hanzo ventures a question.

“Is he all right?”

Fareeha shrugs.

“Mom is with him. He’ll be all right.”

Even with that answer, unease twists his stomach. He doesn’t want this, the ability to hurt Jesse this way. He was out of the way of physical harm, but he still came away hurt. Even so, Hanzo can’t imagine anyone else taking his place retrieving the data. No one else should have been in that kind of danger.

“You know, if you were anyone else, I wouldn’t have to sit here and have this conversation. Genji was always good at keeping him out of his own head, but because it’s _you_ Genji was just as scared.”

Hanzo hadn’t even thought about his brother, and that realization adds guilt to the tangle of uncomfortable emotions. Though, if it’s an acute guilt from causing his brother to worry or the more general guilty miasma that is inextricably linked to thoughts of his brother, Hanzo isn’t sure.

Fareeha brushes her hair back behind her ears and meets Hanzo’s eyes again. Hanzo swallows. His throat hurts, and he only just noticed. His whole body stings and itches by turns. If there was a fire, there were probably also burns. He doesn’t look down at himself to check, because that would mean breaking eye contact.

“That order wasn’t a chance for you to be a martyr. If you were under my command, I’d have you charged for insubordination, but I’m not an officer anymore and this isn’t the military. So I’m saying this as someone who cares about Jesse—don’t you dare fucking stay here if you’re going to do that again. He deserves better.”

Hanzo sighs helplessly.

“It’s Genji’s decision whether I stay, not mine.”

“I do not give a shit about what Genji wants. Genji isn’t my brother. If you’re going to break _my_ brother’s heart, you’re going to do it now by leaving, instead of later when your fucking death wish catches up with you. If you want to stay here, you have to get your shit together. You do _not_ get to make him watch you die. Understood?”

Hanzo nods. He’s not sure what else to do.

“Good.”

She stands and leaves.

 

* * *

 

Hanzo doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he wakes almost immediately this time. The lights are low, the window dark. He has no idea if he slept a few hours or another day. His head feels clearer and his body proportionately worse.

Jesse is here though, and that is a marked improvement to his situation.

Jesse sets aside a bottle of bright blue liquid—some sports drink, probably—and gets to his feet. Before Hanzo can say anything, Jesse leans down and kisses his temple. Hanzo pulls aside the oxygen mask and kisses him back, though he’s careful to keep his mouth closed. He’s revolted by the taste himself, he can’t imagine inflicting it on anyone else.

Hanzo resettles the mask and Jesse sits on the bed, taking one of Hanzo’s hands as he does. Hanzo studies him. He looks terrible, though not as terrible as Hanzo expected. The roots of his hair are damp, and he smells strongly of soap. He must not have been up long.

“How do you feel?” Hanzo asks. He tries for his usual volume, and bites back the cough that threatens to punish him for his overreach. Jesse shakes his head with an incredulous look.

“I should be askin’ you that.”

“I am fine,” Hanzo says, waving dismissively with his free hand.

“Babe, you can’t see what you look like,” Jesse says. Maybe he meant it as a joke, but there’s an edge to his voice. Hanzo squeezes his hand and catches his gaze.

“I am alive. You are here with me. How could I not be fine?” Hanzo says with more bravado that he truly feels. Jesse just stares at him, unreadable. Hanzo wonders if he made a mistake, but then Jesse shakes his head again and smiles, though it’s watery.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Hanzo prods.

Jesse frowns and rubs the back of his neck. Something about the angle and the light makes the circles under his eyes even more prominent. Whatever rest he’s had, it wasn’t enough.

“I made an ass of myself,” he sighs. “I was scared out of my damn mind, but that’s not much as excuses go.”

“I’m sure they’ll let you live it down.”

Jesse gives him a calculating look, his tongue peeking out to wet his lips.

“Somebody already told you.”

“Fareeha was here.”

Jesse frowns, glancing back at the door as if she would be there. She isn’t, of course, but he still looks unhappy when he turns back. He shifts a little, as if the bed was suddenly much more uncomfortable, and his gaze roams the room.

“What’d she say?” Jesse asks, hesitant.

Hanzo takes a moment to consider his response. In her way, Fareeha was right. He has entwined himself into someone else’s life, and there’s a responsibility that comes with that, unfamiliar as it is. Maybe his priorities haven’t caught up to the change. Maybe he should reconsider them while he can.

“What she thought I needed to hear.”

“Now who’s not answerin’ questions?”

Hanzo isn’t willing to dignify that with more than a huff. Jesse rolls his eyes, but doesn’t press further. Silence falls between them, a little less comfortable than normal but not unbearable.

Fareeha’s words are still fresh in his mind. Hanzo turns over the idea of leaving in his head and finds that he balks at it. He wants to be here, to continue the life he’s building, and to share it with Jesse. He wants all that more fiercely than he’s wanted anything he can remember, but he almost lost his chance at any of it. He shudders with the realization.

Jesse reaches for him, concern written on his face. Hanzo pulls him close, pressing their foreheads together. He pulls the mask down, letting it dangle from his neck. The only air he wants is what’s mingling between them.

“I’m sorry, Jesse,” he whispers. “I won’t take a risk like that again, I swear.”

This close, Hanzo can hear Jesse swallow, can feel the air move as he takes a few shaky breaths. He finally lifts his hands to Hanzo’s face, cradling it carefully.

“I’m so glad to hear it, sugar.”


End file.
